MainStreet IT Solutions Is Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry’s Extended IT Team
Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry is a fine cabinet manufacturer. They have been in business for more than three decades, and in that time they have developed a series of unique IT processes specific to their needs and work.
While they have a full-time IT Administrator on staff that handles their core business processes and line of business apps, for all other things IT, they rely on MainStreet IT Solutions.
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As Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry Grew, Their IT Grew Too
MainStreet IT Solutions has been providing supplementary IT support to Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry for over a year now. Prior to then, Kevin Hertzog, IT Administrator, was able to manage the majority of their IT needs internally.
However, as Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry grew, gained more clients, and expanded its staff, it became clear its IT needs were becoming increasingly complex. Cybersecurity and other high-level IT concerns required expertise that Kevin doesn’t (and shouldn’t have to) have.
In his role, Kevin manages Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry’s ERP system, programs their line of business modeling software, and takes care of the company’s 75 workstations. Instead of adding more to his plate, Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry decided to outsource all other IT needs to MainStreet IT Solutions.
“We had gotten large enough where we needed someone to take care of the things that weren’t Premier-centered,” says Kevin.
This wasn’t the first time that Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry tried to outsource their more general IT support needs either. In the past, they had done extensive market research and vetting to try to find an IT company that could understand the work that Kevin does for them, with little success.
That’s why, in the end, they opted to offload their general IT support needs to MainStreet IT Solutions, and allow Kevin to focus on the specialized work the company undertook.
“That’s where MainStreet IT Solutions was able to fit in very well, taking care of our networking and helping out with our security,” says Kevin.
Why Did Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry Choose MainStreet IT Solutions?
Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry was very careful in selecting the right IT company to partner with. They selected MainStreet IT Solutions for four key reasons…
Local IT Expertise
Information technology is more complicated than ever before—there are many things to consider when selecting an IT service company.
You could hire a remote IT provider—they’re cheap, simple, and common in North America. But what happens when a disaster occurs, and you need a technician fast?
Without a local IT company who is readily on hand to visit your site, and who really cares about your business, your IT needs will go unattended. This will end up hurting your bottom line.
One of the biggest complaints we hear from our new clients is that the remote IT company took too long to respond to requests for service. This includes the time they took to answer phone calls and ticket requests online, as well as the time it took to resolve their problems.
They tell us that the remote IT company:
- Didn’t return their calls promptly
- Only made onsite visits when it was convenient for them
- Took too long to resolve their IT problems
Wouldn’t you rather have a local IT service company that’s invested in your relationship and quality IT service?
How long will it take for a distant IT company to show up? Will you be high on their priority list? Probably not.
This is unacceptable—every minute of downtime costs you in productivity. Your IT service company should always treat your problems with a sense of urgency.
When you work with a local IT company (as with Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry and MainStreet IT Solutions), they can resolve issues promptly. This prevents IT interruptions and downtime.
“There’s no sense in us being the expert when MainStreet IT Solutions is right around the corner,” says Kevin. “We can reach out to them for that help.”
Size & Scope
Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry was also looking for an IT company that was the right size.
They knew an IT company that was too small wouldn’t be able to deliver the resources, expertise and capabilities they required. On the other hand, too large of an IT company would fail to deliver the personal and attentive support they needed.
In the end, we were the perfect fit for Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry. Large enough to seamlessly augment their IT support capabilities, and not so big that we’d overlook them for other clients.
Extremely Responsive
There’s nothing more frustrating than trying to get in touch with the person handling your IT, and not being able to.
Whether they leave the phone ringing or refuse to respond to emails and tickets, it’s simply unacceptable that those in charge of your technology can’t be reached for support.
More and more often we hear from potential and new clients that they just want to work with IT support that will come when they call. In dealing with those that don’t, they keep encountering the same problems—usually, no one can get their work done until the technician shows up.
But when will that be?
After you’ve placed a call to your IT support, it’s just a matter of time before the problem gets fixed—but do you even know how long you’re expected to wait?
Depending on when you place the call, they may not even show up the same day. And if the problem is serious enough to cause downtime for even a couple of employees, that’s a lot of wasted time and a lot of wasted wages.
All of this is to say that when you evaluate a given IT support company, there’s a lot to consider. Many of these key aspects (service consistency, service level agreements, support call wait times and windows, etc.) need to be determined from the start.
This is why the MainStreet IT Solutions team is proud to deliver fast, effective, and responsive IT support. Case in point: recently the Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry team encountered a critical issue while trying to access one of their line of business applications.
The servers for this specific application were moved to India, and the way Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry’s firewall was configured wouldn’t allow them to access it in the new location.
“MainStreet IT Solutions took care of all that,” says Kevin. “I sent over a ticket, they figured out what was happening, and our application was running again in a couple of minutes.”
Flexible Service Model
Lastly, as a smaller business, Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry didn’t want to be locked into a service contract long-term. They need to be able to actively assess their IT needs as they go, and make changes quickly as needed.
With us, Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry isn’t stuck with an annual or even semi-annual contract. We let them maintain their flexibility and scalability.
“That’s a big deal for a small company like us,” says Kevin. “We have to be able to stay flexible.”
MainStreet IT Solutions Delivers Cybersecurity Expertise
Do you have real cybersecurity expertise on your IT team?
It’s understandable if you don’t. IT professionals with skills and experience in cybersecurity are in high demand, making them hard to find and expensive to hire.
“It’s not something I need to learn or keep up with,” says Kevin. “It’s worked out really well.”
This is yet another reason why Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry relies on MainStreet IT Solutions. Rather than hiring new IT staff members, or paying for Kevin to take expensive and time-consuming cybersecurity certification courses, they can leave it all to us.
“It has been good for us to offload that workload,” says Kevin. “It means we’re able to concentrate on the things that we need to be able to concentrate on. That’s why we went with MainStreet IT Solutions.”
Here’s a key example: Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry recently began the process of finding cybersecurity insurance. Meeting the stipulations laid out by cybersecurity insurance providers may not be easy depending on the state of a business’ cybersecurity posture.
Modern cybersecurity has become so complicated that one can’t expect a simple cybersecurity defense to be sufficient.
That’s why cybersecurity insurance carriers are expecting so much more from the organizations they cover. They don’t want to risk having to pay out millions on their policies, and so, they raise their standards and ensure businesses are properly defending their data.
They do this by having potential clients (like Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry) fill out extensive questionnaires about the state of their cybersecurity. Luckily for Kevin, he didn’t have to handle it on his own
“They were very responsive in helping me walk through the questionnaire,” says Kevin.
MainStreet IT Solutions Migrated Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry To Microsoft Azure
Azure is Microsoft’s enterprise-grade cloud computing platform—Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry’s team can rely on this solution to help them cut costs by hosting off-site, as well as benefit from a totally scalable configuration that fits their needs.
This premier service offers a range of benefits for all types of businesses:
Outsourced Infrastructure
Stay focused on the parts of your business that really need your attention. You don’t have to babysit your servers any longer—take the resources previously devoted to service maintenance and apply them where they can have the greatest effect.
Productivity Improvement
Beyond the managed services, Azure has a range of further tools to help your team do what they do even better. This comprehensive set of development, deployment, and management tools includes local development and debugging via Visual Studio or the Azure CLI, continuous deployment with Azure DevOps tools, and live monitoring thanks to Application Insights.
Secure & Convenient Access
No matter when you need them, Azure offers easy access to the solutions you use. Whether you’re on-premises, working in a hybrid environment like Azure Stack, on IoT Edge devices, or in other clouds, you can access functions as need be.
Enhanced Security
Microsoft Azure data is stored in data centers that offer an industry-leading combination of physical and logical safeguards, from high perimeter fencing and 24/7 surveillance to multi-factor biometric locks.
Azure Active Directory has built-in security features including authentication tools, access control, and identity management in addition to their own top-notch network and system security.
As a result of this project, we have vastly increased Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry’s security, modernized their infrastructure, and made their team more productive.
We created two new virtual servers within Microsoft Azure, implementing native backups and disaster recovery options for a robust infrastructure to deploy web apps.
After this deployment, we helped the internal team at the company to migrate data from one environment to another for testing. After this testing period, we were able to run a final batch migration for updated files, and from there all production was running live in the Azure environment.
We Are An Extension Of Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry’s IT Team
Since partnering with MainStreet IT Solutions, Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry has enjoyed seamless and effective support for their entire organization. That’s what Kevin and the Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry team want from their IT.
They want to be confident it will work as expected, day in and day out. It needs to be responsive and secure—and with MainStreet IT Solutions’ help, that’s what they get.
“MainStreet IT Solutions has been really helpful,” says Kevin.
